The 2013 Hines Competition is underway!

One hundred sixty teams from 70 universities in the United States and Canada are currently developing solutions for a site in Minneapolis’s Downtown East neighborhood, near the site of the new Minnesota Vikings stadium

The ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, now in its 11th year, is an urban design and development challenge for graduate students. The Hines Competition challenges multidisciplinary student teams to devise a comprehensive development program for a real, large-scale site. Teams of five students representing at least three disciplines have two weeks to develop solutions that include drawings, site plans, tables, and market-feasible financial data.

The University of St Thomas team members are Thomas McElroy, full time MBA student; Thomas Strohm, MSRE student, Michael Richardson, Master of Urban and Regional Planning student at the University of Minnesota; Amber Hill, Master of Landscape Architecture student at the University of Minnesota; and John Briel, Master of Urban and Regional Planning student at the University of Minnesota.

This is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that any of the submitted schemes will be applied to the site. The winning team will receive $50,000 and the finalist teams $10,000 each.

The ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition is part of the Institute’s ongoing effort to raise interest among young people in creating better communities, improving development patterns, and increasing awareness of the need for multidisciplinary solutions to development and design challenges. This competition is an ideas competition; there is no expectation that any of the submitted schemes will be applied to the site. The winning team will receive $50,000 and the finalist teams $10,000 each. Winners that will advance to the next round of the competition will be announced by the end of February.

The University of St. Thomas will be hosting NAIOP’s 9th University Challenge, a competition across 5 universities where student teams act as development consultants for a potential redevelopment project. This year the site is a 1.91 acre site at the intersection of University Ave and Washington Ave in the “heart” of the University of Minnesota’s campus.

Join us Thursday afternoon, April 12 at the University of St. Thomas Minneapolis campus as the teams, including: the University of St. Thomas, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Marquette University and University of Northern Iowa; present their project concepts with a reception at Brit’s pub immediately following.

This year, five schools including UST, The University of Wisconsin Madison, St. Cloud State University, University of Northern Iowa and Marquette University will compete in the 2011 University Real Estate Challenge. Students have been working on the redevelopment of the Oakdale Mall site throughout the spring semester. Continue Reading

This spring, students in the undergraduate real estate market analysis course will compete in the ARGUS Software University Challenge. ARGUS is a software company specializing in products built specifically for the commercial real estate industry to improve the visibility and flow of information throughout critical business process; property management, asset valuation, portfolio management, budgeting, forecasting, reporting and lease management.

The case that will be analyzed this spring is entitled “Investing in a Return to Normalcy: Back to the Future”. With a cast of characters including Marty McFly and George McFly and forecasting of future marketing conditions, the case title is fitting. Continue Reading

We have drawn a winner for our blog and twitter contest. Congratulations to C. Brooks who has won a complementary registration to the UST Alumni Association First Friday Luncheon Series.

Thank you to everyone who is now following us on the Real Estate Matters blog and @USTrealestate on Twitter. We’d like to hear from you. What do you like about our blog posts and tweets? Is there additional information that you would find helpful?